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And finally, she has left me. We have been apart for a week now; she flew back to Heathrow on Saturday night, and I have been instructed to remain on this side of the Atlantic for a little longer, to do all the things she would have done if she had had more time. I am in L.A at the moment, consummately failing to make much of an impression on the sight-seeing list she left behind. I have borrowed someone's infinity pool and, in a selfless gesture not foreign to my character, am looking after it for them while they are away.

About a month ago, the idiot and I had an argument. Not the first, but certainly the most prolonged and unnecessary. She placed bans on my writing of the blog (a fair excuse for the silence, no?), and at the same time said she was too busy, let alone too upset with my behavior, to write it herself. In circumstances I won't relate here, I came to discover that she had been nurturing the manufacture of an imaginary boyfriend, without my knowledge or approval, for the entirety of our stay in Portland. As you can imagine, Consette felt deceived (to the degree that she began referring to herself in the third person for a while). An imaginary boyfriend? It is beyond pathetic. I hated him at first. He seemed so ratty - an improbable perfection of all I know to be her type. Gruesome. But then we got to talking, and it turned out that he was very very embarrassed about the whole thing. Understandable, given that all his illusory existence amounted to was an accumulation of unrequited desires, a hologram of a person, a good three years in the making. We both agreed this was rather sad; for her sake, it was decided, we were going to enforce a liberation.

The imaginary boyfriend and I eloped for a dirty weekend in Newport (OR), and the idiot hit the roof.

Although she would never say it herself, I think she's finally come to see the benefits of life without his influence. She is unable to concede the charitable motivation which underscored my actions, but last Thursday she caved in to a conciliatory transatlantic email, replying that she is less angry with me now that she doesn't have to look at my face every day, and that it was wise for me to stay on in America. She also sanctioned a resurrection of the blog. Hello blog! I am pleased to be back with you. The boyfriend is here with me in L.A, and we plan to spend the summer catching up with all the writing we have not done. And, who knows, by the end of it, maybe we will stay on into September, and the rest of 2011, beginning of 2012, forever? The idiot is growing up, and I flatter myself that I am an important factor in this maturation. My absence, too, will be important, not to mention the absence of the boyfriend. We are happy to absent ourselves together. But not before all these loose ends of her year abroad have been accounted for - whatever she might think about me, I am capable of considering matters beyond the sphere of my own personality. Just about.

Consette x